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aberrantangelsIf I had an attention span, this would have been posted a lot earlier. Apologies.
My employers celebrated their anniversary recently. And so did the event that made them possible, maybe even necessary. I was too busy to blog this commemoration, but it's about time I did.
On July 19, 1923, the Aeon Society for Gentlemen opened its doors in the Chicago mansion of two-fisted millionaire Maxwell Anderson Mercer. The initial membership consisted of Mercer himself; his boon companion, Michael Daemon Donighal, transformed by the incredible energies of the Hammersmith Incident into the physical and mental marvel known as Dr. Primoris; kid sidekick Whitley Styles, whom Mercer had rescued from the clutches of the Thuggee; half-mad scientist Benjamin Franklin Dixon ("The Professor" to nearly everyone); the Annie Oakley of the Jazz Age, circus-brat Annabelle Lee "Crackshot" Newfield; Jake Stefokowski, the Danger Ace, veteran of the Lafayette Escadrille; and renowned explorer "Safari Jack" Tallon. If this doesn't sound incredibly overblown and melodramatic to modern ears, I'm not telling it right.
Because they were incredibly overblown and melodramatic — or, at least, they were larger than life in a way that seems incredibly overblown and melodramatic to our jaded modern way of thinking. They were pulp heroes in the real world. They were the original Team Tomorrow, decades before any team actually bore that name.
Of course, most of you have never the hell heard of the Hammersmith Incident. In fact, Aeon has an entire department working overtime to make sure you've never heard of it (or a number of other things) and never will. Hell, thanks to their diligent efforts, you've barely heard of Aeon.
Briefly, then. On July 21, 1922, Dr Sir Calvin Hammersmith invited luminaries of science, art and politics to gather at Atlas Cross, his mansion in London's West End. He wished to demonstrate the Telluric Engine, a theoretically limitless energy source which tapped what physicists, a few years later, would call "zero-point energy" — the random electromagnetic fluctuations that exist even at absolute zero or near it. Mercer was invited, and he brought Donighal with him.
The Engine blew up, probably the moment it was turned on. Atlas Cross was destroyed. There were only a handful of survivors, all of whom were changed by the "telluric energy" released when the Engine went critical. Long-range effects of the "Z-waves" changed other people and even some places. The energy turned out to be contagious as well; those exposed to telluric currents proved capable of causing critical exposure in those who witnessed their exploits. (This may be why the Aeon founders often referred to telluric energy as Inspiration.) In some cases, the effect even seems to have reached back in time — or how else explain that some of Aeon's founders had Inspired abilities even before the Incident?
In human subjects, the effects fell into three basic categories. Some simply became incredibly lucky in one or more fields of common human endeavor; they were called daredevils, or paramorphs, and the change they experienced, drawing on inner courage and willpower, was known as heroic inspiration. At least three of Aeon's first seven — Crackshot, Danger Ace, and Safari Jack — were daredevils. Others tapped into their mental fortitude to gain the powers that "psychical" societies had been trying to prove for years; this psychic inspiration produced psychomorphs, colloquially mesmerists even though not all of them had the power to cloud men's minds. Whitley Styles had psychic powers from his years of involuntary study among the Thuggee. Others still underwent physical changes that gave them capabilities blatantly beyond those of mortal male and female people; dynamic inspiration produced eximorphs, otherwise known as stalwarts. (We novas are eximorphs, albeit ones as far beyond most of the stalwarts of the '20s in our telluric development as those stalwarts were beyond the un-Inspired.) Professor Dixon and Dr. Primoris were both stalwarts — well, Dixon (who answered to his surname only) was a stalwart. Donighal, in my opinion, was already a nova; there just wasn't a word for it then.
Nobody knows for sure what Mercer himself became, though I have my suspicions. They have to do with him dropping out of sight for most of the year between the Hammersmith Incident and Aeon's opening, but this isn't about that.
The Galatea was hosting an experiment with zero-point energy. We suspect that's why it blew; they gambled that space, where absolute zero is the way of things, would be safer than a planet. But the Hammersmith incident created all three varieties of neomorph, not just eximorphs. We think we know what was different, or rather who made it different. But that, to quote Ralph Manheim translating Michael Ende, is another story and will be told another time.
My employers celebrated their anniversary recently. And so did the event that made them possible, maybe even necessary. I was too busy to blog this commemoration, but it's about time I did.
On July 19, 1923, the Aeon Society for Gentlemen opened its doors in the Chicago mansion of two-fisted millionaire Maxwell Anderson Mercer. The initial membership consisted of Mercer himself; his boon companion, Michael Daemon Donighal, transformed by the incredible energies of the Hammersmith Incident into the physical and mental marvel known as Dr. Primoris; kid sidekick Whitley Styles, whom Mercer had rescued from the clutches of the Thuggee; half-mad scientist Benjamin Franklin Dixon ("The Professor" to nearly everyone); the Annie Oakley of the Jazz Age, circus-brat Annabelle Lee "Crackshot" Newfield; Jake Stefokowski, the Danger Ace, veteran of the Lafayette Escadrille; and renowned explorer "Safari Jack" Tallon. If this doesn't sound incredibly overblown and melodramatic to modern ears, I'm not telling it right.
Because they were incredibly overblown and melodramatic — or, at least, they were larger than life in a way that seems incredibly overblown and melodramatic to our jaded modern way of thinking. They were pulp heroes in the real world. They were the original Team Tomorrow, decades before any team actually bore that name.
Of course, most of you have never the hell heard of the Hammersmith Incident. In fact, Aeon has an entire department working overtime to make sure you've never heard of it (or a number of other things) and never will. Hell, thanks to their diligent efforts, you've barely heard of Aeon.
Briefly, then. On July 21, 1922, Dr Sir Calvin Hammersmith invited luminaries of science, art and politics to gather at Atlas Cross, his mansion in London's West End. He wished to demonstrate the Telluric Engine, a theoretically limitless energy source which tapped what physicists, a few years later, would call "zero-point energy" — the random electromagnetic fluctuations that exist even at absolute zero or near it. Mercer was invited, and he brought Donighal with him.
The Engine blew up, probably the moment it was turned on. Atlas Cross was destroyed. There were only a handful of survivors, all of whom were changed by the "telluric energy" released when the Engine went critical. Long-range effects of the "Z-waves" changed other people and even some places. The energy turned out to be contagious as well; those exposed to telluric currents proved capable of causing critical exposure in those who witnessed their exploits. (This may be why the Aeon founders often referred to telluric energy as Inspiration.) In some cases, the effect even seems to have reached back in time — or how else explain that some of Aeon's founders had Inspired abilities even before the Incident?
In human subjects, the effects fell into three basic categories. Some simply became incredibly lucky in one or more fields of common human endeavor; they were called daredevils, or paramorphs, and the change they experienced, drawing on inner courage and willpower, was known as heroic inspiration. At least three of Aeon's first seven — Crackshot, Danger Ace, and Safari Jack — were daredevils. Others tapped into their mental fortitude to gain the powers that "psychical" societies had been trying to prove for years; this psychic inspiration produced psychomorphs, colloquially mesmerists even though not all of them had the power to cloud men's minds. Whitley Styles had psychic powers from his years of involuntary study among the Thuggee. Others still underwent physical changes that gave them capabilities blatantly beyond those of mortal male and female people; dynamic inspiration produced eximorphs, otherwise known as stalwarts. (We novas are eximorphs, albeit ones as far beyond most of the stalwarts of the '20s in our telluric development as those stalwarts were beyond the un-Inspired.) Professor Dixon and Dr. Primoris were both stalwarts — well, Dixon (who answered to his surname only) was a stalwart. Donighal, in my opinion, was already a nova; there just wasn't a word for it then.
Nobody knows for sure what Mercer himself became, though I have my suspicions. They have to do with him dropping out of sight for most of the year between the Hammersmith Incident and Aeon's opening, but this isn't about that.
The Galatea was hosting an experiment with zero-point energy. We suspect that's why it blew; they gambled that space, where absolute zero is the way of things, would be safer than a planet. But the Hammersmith incident created all three varieties of neomorph, not just eximorphs. We think we know what was different, or rather who made it different. But that, to quote Ralph Manheim translating Michael Ende, is another story and will be told another time.
